Draconian conduct of police during pandemic warped priorities – and now trust is diminished

The principle that success should be measured in less crime rather than increase in arrests has been ignored

MINISTERS might have thought it “brilliant” that the police were fining the public for Covid breaches, but the long-term consequences of creating a temporary police state appear not to have been part of the conversation.

Such was the zeal with which officers chased down reports of illegal barbecues, tea parties and picnics that critics likened pandemic-era Britain to East Germany under the Stasi - the secret police.

The UK became a curtain-twitcher’s paradise, pitting neighbour against neighbour, and causing community tensions that have yet to heal.

More importantly, trust in the police, essential to the central concept of “policing by consent”, was eroded by the warped priorities that ministers demanded of forces around the country. Blameless citizens claimed that a family get-together would merit a knock at the door from police,who showed no such interest if a burglary was reported.

By March 2022, police forces in

England and Wales had issued 118,978 fixed penalty notices for breaches of coronavirus restrictions.

Fines were issued for uncovered mouths and noses in public places; for failing to self-isolate; for meeting too many friends at once; for having a picnic; for going home after entering the country, and much else besides.

Coronavirus regulations changed more than 60 times over the course of the pandemic, meaning many officers struggled to keep up with the latest iteration of the rules, and fines were issued unlawfully.

At the time, senior police officers were understood to be concerned. Having spent years building up trust with communities that were, in some cases, suspicious of the police, they privately expressed fears that longterm damage would be done to their ability to police by consent.

Derbyshire police, who turned out to be one of the most draconian forces of the period, set the tone by pouring black dye into a beauty spot known as the Blue Lagoon in the Peak District to discourage people from going there for exercise. The same force deployed drones to spy on people exercising away from their local area, and two women drinking coffee while on a walk together were fined £200 each after their hot drinks were deemed to be “a picnic”. Their fines were later withdrawn and they received an apology, but the damage was done, as far as public opinion was concerned.

A report by HM Inspector of Constabulary in 2021 accepted that there had been “a reduced service” in some areas of policing, as “some forces increased the number of crimes they decided not to investigate because they were unlikely to be solved” and reduced in-person visits to registered sex offenders. The low point came in March 2021 during an open air vigil for Sarah Everard, who had been abducted and murdered by an off-duty police officer, where four people were arrested for breaching Covid regulations. A High Court judge later found that the police had breached the human rights of the organisers of the vigil, in particular the right to freedom of speech and assembly.

A report on policing during the pandemic by the Police Foundation said that “public trust and confidence is something that the police service should never take for granted”. Yet it appears that ministers did take that trust for granted as they demanded that chief constables be given their “marching orders” for greater enforcement of Covid rules. There is evidence that this push for evergreater numbers of fines for petty offences has permanently affected the police’s mentality.

Chief Supt Simon Ovens, from the Metropolitan Police’s Roads and Transport Policing Command, told a meeting of the London Assembly last year that Transport for London was targeting one million speeding prosecutions in the capital each year, compared with the 130,000 issued from fixed speed cameras in 2018. Rather than targeting road safety and fewer deaths and injuries on the roads, the police were targeting enforcement – a reversal of the Peelian principle that success should be measured in a lack of crime, not an increase in arrests.

This target of an eight-fold increase in speeding fines in the capital came despite research that suggested police forces had been fining innocent people in their rush to ramp up enforcement.

The House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that a “significant number” of fines had been wrongly issued, but that many people felt too intimidated to challenge them. The committee discovered that when people who had been issued with fixed penalty notices opted to take the matter to court, rather than simply paying the fine uncontested, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) found that around a quarter of the charges were incorrect.

Even more extraordinary was the CPS’S disclosure in 2021 that every single prosecution brought under the Coronavirus Act had been unlawful.

One force set the tone by pouring black dye into a beauty spot known as the Blue Lagoon to discourage people from going there for exercise

There is evidence that this push for ever-greater numbers of fines for petty offences has permanently affected the police’s mentality

The Act was set up to allow the authorities to detain any “potentially infectious” person who refused to take a coronavirus test, and a CPS review found that all 270 charges under the Act had been withdrawn when they got to court, or had been overturned after innocent people were convicted.

Another of the long-term effects of the crackdown has been on the courts.

Already facing an inevitable backlog of cases because of the closure of public buildings, courts found themselves dealing with the extra caseload generated by Covid fines when they re-opened after lockdown.

In November last year, Max Hill, the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, disclosed that almost 75,000 defendants were awaiting trial, up from 70,200 in August 2020, meaning the post-covid backlog of cases has increased, rather than being gradually reduced.

The Government’s target is to reduce the waiting list to 53,000 cases by March 2025, which may seem unambitious, but even that target is in danger because of a squeeze on public spending, Mr Hill said.

In January, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that a single court in London – Snaresbrook Crown Court – had a backlog of cases almost double that of the whole of Wales.

The court had 3,937 cases outstanding, compared with 2,251 in Wales, meaning victims of crime were having to wait an average of 300 days from the point when a case was transferred to crown court until it comes to trial.